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Spot Pornography on Facebook for a Quarter-Cent an Image

By Quentin Hardy December 5, 2011 11:05 amDecember 5, 2011 11:05 am

Companies like Google, Facebook and Travelocity have plenty of money and armadas of smart people. There are plenty of tasks they do not mind outsourcing, however, and a look at some of those jobs presents an interesting picture of where work is going.

ODesk, which runs marketplaces that match people with jobs, currently has all three companies signed up, along with Hewlett-Packard, AOL and others.

Google, though it uses software to do translations, also hires individuals to check translated words and phrases. The company recently hired a bunch of people in Belgium who were fluent in both Flemish and French. Google requires that the outsiders translate about 250 words an hour. By outsourcing the work, oDesk says, Google cut its average human-checked translation costs from 21 cents a word to 11 cents a word.

Like Facebook and Travelocity, Google did not comment on the specifics of the work done though oDesk.

Google also hires outsiders to write the pitches in its Google Offers daily deals. This probably lowers its costs relative to Groupon, the leader in the field. Groupon has a large staff of humanities graduates in its Chicago headquarters crafting catchy pitches.

Facebook hires contract workers to look for wayward speech and images. While this pays about $10 an hour for a good moderator, according to an oDesk official, Facebook lists the work at a remarkably low rate: spotting and weeding out suspected spam, pornography, hate speech and cyber bullying pay about one-quarter of a penny an item. They are usually looked at in batches of nine posts at once, which speeds the process. Images pop up on a grid of 12 pictures, and the reviewer flags anything sketchy before moving to the next set.

Travelocity uses the service for creating features, like “the three to five best places to photograph in Cancun,” or what the must-eat dishes are in some exotic locale. After the writers are screened, they select their assignments from a list of fantasy topics for a locale.